James says he’s gaining yardage

Craig James, the former football star and now rookie candidate for the U.S. Senate, was in Houston on Wednesday for interviews and meetings. We met over coffee at Tiny Boxwood’s, a spiffy River Oaks eatery in a nursery setting. (It’s a plant nursery, by the way, not a baby nursery.)

James, one of the more congenial candidates on the campaign trail, says he’s getting more comfortable by the day as he travels the state and works to make himself known, not as a former ESPN football analyst but a potential U.S. senator. I asked him what distinguished him from his chief rivals for the GOP nomination.

James, like his fellow candidates, gigged Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the frontrunner in the race, for not participating in debates and candidate forums. “David doesn’t show up. He’s hidin’,” he said. “I understand the strategy, but it’s inexcusable, and I do believe he owes Texans an explanation for why he’s not showing up. . . . It shows a lack of courage.”

Former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz: “I think he’s a good lawyer, and he’s lived in the courtroom. I live in the court of Real Street.”

About Rick Santorum, the presidential candidate he’s very vocally supporting: “We had dinner about a year and a half ago in Washington. I just wanted to meet him – I was thinking about the Senate, and he was thinking about the presidency. We talked about the same things – faith, family, the Constitution, free markets – and I really liked him. And he asked me, ‘Do you want to come here to be, or do you want to come here to do? Everybody wants to be somebody when they come to Washington. We need doers, people who want to do the work of the people.’ That stuck with me. Once Perry got out of the race, I latched on immediately to Rick Santorum, because I thought he was the true conservative capable of beating Obama.”

Texas Tech: James said his famous run-in with former Red Raider head coach Mike Leach rarely comes up on the campaign trail, even in West Texas. When it does, he said, it’s usually someone voicing support for a father standing up for his son against a bully.

James insists he’s siphoning support from his opponents as he travels around the state. “It’s a race to come in second place and get in the runoff,” he said. “If David keeps messin’ around not coming to these debates, people are getting fed up with that. He may fall off that top perch before he knows it.”